1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to providing markup language based access to back office systems, for instance Web based access to legacy systems commonly found throughout the insurance industry which do not have native browser functionality, and to implementing workflows in such environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Access to business functionality via the Worldwide Web portion of the Internet is becoming an increasing necessity in today's competitive business climate. However many business systems, particularly back office or back-end systems, do not have native browser-based capabilities and thus do not support Web access.
Such has been a particular problem in the insurance industry, where various back office or back-end systems are employed. These back office or back-end systems take a variety of forms, including agency management systems, policy administrations systems, and rate quoting systems. Often these back office or back-end systems are legacy systems, lacking any Web or markup language based interface or native browser functionality.
Previous approaches have implemented individual and separate Web user interfaces for accessing data from respective ones of various back office or back-end systems. An example of such an approach is the PhoenixDirect® interface, a Vertafore product. The PhoenixDirect® interface provides a Web front end for a Phoenix® policy administration system. The PhoenixDirect® interface is tightly coupled to the specific back office system (i.e., Phoenix® policy administration system). The PhoenixDirect® interface is not sufficiently flexible to provide a single Web user interface for other back office or back-end systems. The PhoenixDirect® interface is also not sufficiently flexible to synchronize the Web user interface with changes to the back office or back-end system.
Such tightly tailored approaches that essentially require the building of a specific interface for each back office or back end system are of course time intensive and inefficient. Such also places undue burdens on the Web developers. Different skill sets are typically required to build and provide support for Web-based systems, as compared to back office or back-end systems. In traditional development environment, Web developers must understand the business process offered by the back office or back-end systems. This results in longer development times, a greater use of resources than is desirable, increases the likelihood of errors, and increases development costs.
An improved approach of providing markup language based access, for example Web access, to back office or back end systems is desirable.